The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: from Marathon to Waterloo
About this book
“A jolly good read….One of the great Victorian bestsellers…(reflected) in the frequency with which it was republished – thirty-eight times in the forty-eight years between 1851 and 1894.” -John Keegan Originally published in 1851, at the peak of British imperial power, The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, Creasy's best known fundamental work of history, found an eager audience of readers who wanted to understand how Britain had achieved its tremendous influence and how long it would last. Since then, these chronicles of ancient and modern military confrontations have informed and inspired generations of students and armchair historians. “From Creasy’s book and other popular military histories, nineteenth-century Americans learned that in a single day on a single battlefield in a single crucial engagement a whole empire could be destroyed, a nation’s independence assured, and the fate of millions determined by the actions of a single army led by a brilliant commander.. This concept of war almost totally ignored logistics, political factors, strategy, and other aspects of military operations. What determined the outcome of the decisive battles that determined the outcome of wars in the popular mind was the brilliance of commanders and the courage of their armies. Victory inevitably went to the side that was superior in character and virtue.” -Ethan Sepp Rafuse, “A Single Grand The First Campaign and Battle of Manassas